One of the most famous scenes in classical literature is theDichterweiheat the beginning of theTheogony: when Hesiod was tending his sheep below Mount Helicon, the Muses approached him, provided him with a staff and a divine voice, and told him to sing of the blessed, everlasting gods.

Throughout the Works and Days (WD), Hesiod reaffirms and promotes his audience’s belief in the reality of the supernatural — that is, the gods of Olympus, whose power the poet clearly takes seriously, given the somber warnings that populate the final calendrical portion of the piece. Drawing on S.I. Johnston’s recent The Story of Myth, as well as the work of folklorists K. Hänninen and G. Bennett, I outline the techniques Hesiod employs to render believable the influence of the divine (...) in both the distant past and the contemporary period. Hesiod constructs a story world familiar to his audience in order to bolster the credibility of the supernatural events, both mythical and contemporary, that he reports. When speaking of the gods’ influence in his own time, Hesiod remains firm on the fact of the gods’ continued intervention only in concrete, mundane phenomena experienced by each of his audience members. Otherwise, the poet tends toward vague language, leaving his audience to come to their own conclusion about the influence of the divine. To encourage a positive conclusion, Hesiod creates an analogy between abstract concepts, such as Strife, and the anthropomorphic gods of myth. Using these strategies, Hesiod imbues WD with belief in divine influence in the world, past and present. (shrink)

Plato's Hesiod is a neglected topic, scholars having long regarded Plato's Homer as a more promising field of inquiry. My aim in this chapter is to demonstrate that this particular bias of scholarly attention, although understandable, is unjustified. Of no other dialogue is this truer than of the Ion.